Police Use of Deadly Force: Should There be a Different Standard For Cops?

“From the tiny town of Colrain at the Vermont border to the siren-pierced streets of Boston, state and local police have shot and killed 73 people across Massachusetts over the last 12 years. The deadliest year was 2013, when 12 people were killed. Every completed killing investigation found the police were justified, in using deadly force; only three of the cases were presented to a grand jury or judicial inquest to determine if a crime was committed.”

Five Birmingham police officers were fired Wednesday for beating an apparently unconscious suspect after a roadway chase, an attack caught on a patrol car videotape that didn't surface publicly for a year.

Police Chief A.C. Roper said the officers, who were not identified, were seasoned veterans but acted in a "shameful" manner.

The cop killer who took the life of a Boston police officer walked out of prison a free man yesterday after just 15 years behind bars, leaving the family of Thomas F. Rose Sr. “sickened,” a family friend says.

Rose, a dad of three, was 42 when he was shot and killed by Terrell Muhammad during a struggle inside the Government Center police station in 1993. Muhammad, in an escape attempt, grabbed Rose’s gun and shot him in the chest. He was sentenced to 26 to 30 years in prison for manslaughter, but served only 15 years.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina.

Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement.

Ivey had been awaiting execution since 1995, when he was convicted of killing Tommy Harrison. Prosecutors said Ivey shot the 38-year-old Orangeburg police sergeant in 1993 after trying to pass a bad check.

Fort Worth’s new police chief, Jeff Halstead, has been receiving high marks while making himself known in the community since taking the job last December.

But the chief needs to understand that no matter how well he has been personally accepted, and even praised, over the past few months, he will be graded meticulously on his handling of an incident last weekend in which a 24-year-old mentally ill man died after a Fort Worth police officer shocked him with a Taser.

PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh City Council is forming a special committee to recommend ways to better protect police officers.

The council's Special Committee on Police Officer Safety will be headed by Council Safety Chair Bruce Kraus, and will include representatives of the Pittsburgh Police Department, Fraternal Order of Police and the Department of Public Safety.